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No need for bus for Mayor Rob Ford’s football team, opposing player says

No need for police to call a TTC bus to rush Mayor Rob Ford’s Don Bosco Eagles away from the Father Henry Carr football field, player says.

A route 36 bus and a route 46 bus are at the centre of the controversy related to last week's police request for buses to help transport Mayor Rob Ford's football team. (RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

A police spokesperson, Mark Pugash, has said that officers asked for the bus because they were concerned about the possible “escalation” of a dispute between an agitated Carr coach and the game referee.

The player’s account, however, largely corroborated the account of a school board spokesperson who says there was never any reason to fear a brawl or worse — and that the Carr players had already left the field as the Bosco players waited for transportation.

“We were gone,” the player, who requested anonymity, said in an interview. “We accepted the loss and moved on. It’s how the game works.”

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In fact, the player said, it was the teenage Carr players who had held their adult coach back, and tried to calm him, during his “temper slip.” He said he was sure the coach was not going to harm the referee.

“We told him, ‘There are cops here, don’t get yourself in an issue,’” the player said. “Eventually he calmed down, then both teams returned to their huddle. . . Both teams weren’t really wanting to get involved, just wanted to see what the coach was going to do.”

With Don Bosco ahead by five touchdowns late in the fourth quarter, the referee declared the game over after the coach confronted him on the field, the player said. The players, he said, then took off their helmets and retreated to their respective team huddles. Three officers joined Carr’s huddle, he said, as another coach spoke to the players to calm them down.

“It was never that serious to get a TTC bus,” he said. “There wasn’t a need to get a bus. It’s football — all confrontations between either team.”

Pugash, speaking before he knew of the player’s comments, would not explain what he meant when he said officers had “concerns over escalation”; the phrase, he said, is “self-explanatory.” But he added that “the same two teams played each other two weeks previously and there had been some friction between the two schools.”

The player, whom the Star did not inform of Pugash’s account, said there was no unusual tension between the two Etobicoke squads. “There is only the usual Carr-Bosco beef. Which in itself is nothing, really just a way to keep our game lively,” he said.

Catholic school board spokesperson John Yan has repeatedly said that the cold and wet weather was the only reason the bus was called; the players, he said, were “exemplary.” Another police spokesperson, Const. Tony Vella, also said the weather was the primary factor. And Brian Riddell, executive secretary for the Toronto District Catholic Athletic Association, said that there was “no confrontation between the two teams whatsoever.”

But Ford said the situation “could have gotten really ugly” had he not been present to “control” his own team. “We had to get out of their field, and the police made that call,” he said Thursday. He refused on Monday to explain why the team needed the bus, saying that is a question for the police.

The police and the school board also disagree on why eight officers were at the field at the end of the game. Pugash said the two school officers who were present prior to the dispute grew concerned enough to call for reinforcements. But Yan said the six extra officers happened to be conducting “community outreach” work nearby and were invited by Don Bosco’s principal to speak to residents at the field.

The player said he was too focused on the game to notice when the officers arrived.

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